Vail Daily letter: Flawed logic in Rogers' rebuttal

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In response to Jacqueline Cartier's commentary in "Valley Voices" from the Dec. 12 issue of the Daily, her case arguing against the assertion that "The best and the brightest voted for Obama" has not presented any facts refuting Don Rogers.

While Rogers' quote is based on a faulty syllogism (which, as it turns out, is true, but just barely), Cartier used conjecture, flawed logic and ambiguous assumptions to make her argument.

Cartier says, "Most (people) would agree that these schools (Ivy League universities) teach a left-leaning curriculum," which she uses to transition into the idea that progressive ideas are not always better than conservative ideas and goes even further, raising the asinine question of whether one person with an MBA is smarter than another.

Who are "most" people? Cartier never provides a source for her information, nor does she give any form of specific example as evidence for her claims, as Rogers has done, so we cannot see how she came to her conclusion which is easily recognizable as thinly veiled opinion being passed off as fact to make one mental leap after the other.

Furthermore, her claim that farmers' and ranchers' agricultural production puts them on level terms with great international and American thinkers, innovators, and business persons (including Colonel Sanders) is entirely removed from reality.

A formal education and intelligence are not mutually exclusive, but hinting that because some people without formal educational backgrounds are/were intelligent and wealthy does not, therefore, extend the demographical title of "higher education" to anyone.

Rogers was citing that voters with higher education levels and subsequently higher income levels tended to vote for Obama, whereas Cartier offers no data, nor demonstration, to support her claims that draw a parallel between having agricultural business acumen and Benjamin Franklin. The idea Cartier espouses that Obama voters are of questionable sanity because of "his presidential record" is completely non sequitur. Not only does Cartier not mention anything about Obama's presidential record, other than the vague implication that it is subpar, but she fails to recognize that those who voted for Obama a second time probably didn't find anything wrong with the president's first term. They will probably only be expecting that he continue to invest in their health care, fund sustainable and renewable energy, reform education, and lift even more people out of poverty, including the scores of millions of people whom his stimulus helped make less poor - even though they would prefer someone else president.